Saturday, 21 June 2025
Front Range Biosciences (“FRB”), is a US based agricultural biotech company that specializes in tissue culture propagation breeding of high-value crops at industrial scale to improve consistency and efficiency for clone and seed production. The company provides hemp, coffee, and high-value crop producers with high-performing Clean Stock® plants and seed by combining the best practices in agriculture with innovative technologies, has entered into a collaborative licensing agreement with Steep Hill and is acquiring the Steep Hill Genomics Research & Development team.
Through this agreement, FRB will accelerate its marker-assisted breeding program and develop new traits and varieties to bring continued innovation to the cannabis and hemp industry. Steep Hill has developed important markers for cannabinoid and terpene production related pathways, advancing FRB’s breeding platform for both seed and vegetatively propagated or cloned varieties.
These markers will also complement the work currently underway in FRB’s breeding program and the results will greatly expand the library of commercially valuable agronomic traits for dependable crop yields in different climates and regions around the world. In addition, FRB will be collaborating with Steep Hill on the development of improved genomics-based tests for commercial cannabis, benefitting the industry by providing more advanced standards and certifications.
“The Steep Hill R&D team is among the top three cannabis genomics groups in the world, and we are very excited to welcome them to FRB,” said Dr. Jonathan Vaught, CEO and Co-Founder of FRB. “This acquisition is a major value inflection point for FRB, as the intellectual property we acquired significantly expands the value of our current portfolio and provides a multi-year leap in the speed of our IP filings. We look forward to strengthening the viability of the cannabis industry with such a monumental collaboration between leaders of agricultural sustainability through science.”
Led by former president of Steep Hill, Dr. Reggie Gaudino, the ten-person genomics team brings nearly four years of data and intellectual property on cannabis genetics to FRB, adding to its existing IP portfolio and patent filings. By joining the groups, FRB’s breeding program will advance significantly, resulting in additional unique and advantaged cannabis and hemp varieties for FRB’s customers.
Joining Dr. Gaudino will be his entire team, which includes four additional PhD’s. Dr. Gaudino will remain as the Head of the Scientific Advisory Board for Steep Hill and lead the collaboration between the two companies.
“Following a comprehensive strategic review, we realized that we had amassed an unsurpassed body of deep learning about cannabis genomics that was ready-made for FRB’s high-value crop development program,” said Andrew Rosenstein, Chief Executive Officer of Steep Hill. “Our new partnership with Front Range Biosciences will unlock the crop development potential of Steep Hill’s IP while positioning our core regulatory cannabis-testing business to benefit from FRB’s best-in-class development infrastructure for years to come.”
